It begins by focussing on potentially lethal counterfeits -- fake drugs, fake brake linings and fake circuit breaker boxes. That conveniently ignores the fact that no one is against cracking down on such dangerous counterfeits, and that the main problems with ACTA concern its attempt to apply the same rules to digital infringement, where there are no safety issues to justify its harsh and disproportionate measures.

But leaving that aside, ACTA doesn't actually tackle the problem of physical counterfeits, for reasons I've discussed before -- the main one being that the nations where fakes tend to originate are not signatories to ACTA, and so won't be bound by it. As for the countries that have signed up, the principal ones like the 27 European Union nations, Japan and the US already have stringent laws that enable counterfeits to be tackled, so ACTA won't make any difference for them either. The only countries where ACTA might have some effect are places like Mexico, and sadly the issue there is not so much fake drugs coming into America as the problems caused by real ones.

Rather than offer any more reasons why ACTA is a good thing, the IPI article then changes direction, and begins a bizarre attack on widespread concerns about ACTA's lack of transparency:

[Anti-IP activists] complain that ACTA was "negotiated in secret," and protest that critics did not have access to negotiators. Rather than making substantive arguments against the actual text of the agreement, they attempt to kill it by condemning the process.

As to the point that treaties have "always been negotiated confidentially between governments", that's also not the case, as this article explains:

Ars Technica recently talked to Michael Geist, a legal scholar at the University of Ottawa, about this effort [to export restrictive American copyright laws abroad]. He told us that rather than making their arguments at the World Intellectual Property Organization, where they would be subject to serious public scrutiny, the US and other supporters of more restrictive copyright law have increasingly focused on pushing their agenda in alternative venues, such as pending trade deals, where negotiations are secret and critics are excluded.

The IPI article concludes:

ACTA should be judged on its merits, not on some false illegitimate-process charge created by opposition activists. And its merits are many.

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The economic impact of these counterfeit products is only one part of the problem. Many of these products are of poor design and quality and cannot perform basic safety functions. The U.S. Customs and Border Patrol and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement estimate 15% of seized counterfeit goods pose a direct risk to public safety.

Counterfeit goods can pose a very real threat to the public and to the firefighters who protect our communities. Here in Atlanta, more than 18,000 counterfeit smoke detectors were recalled after they were distributed in high-risk, low-income communities earlier this year.

About 18,500 counterfeit photoelectric smoke alarms were distributed for free in the Atlanta area between 2006 through May 2011 as part of the Atlanta Smoke Alarm Program.

And this has exactly what to do with censoring internet websites?

http://www.huliq.com/10473/fbi-investigating-detectors-distributed-atlanta-smoke-alarm- program
"More than 18,000 of the apparently uncertified units were purchased in 2005 and 2006 from a company in California."

http://news.consumerreports.org/home/2011/05/atlanta-recalls-counterfeit-smoke-alarm s.html
"The problem dates back five years to when the Atlanta Fire Rescue Department bought the alarms from a vendor in Calabasas, California."
"While the Atlanta firemen work to replace the alarms, the Federal Bureau of Investigation is looking into the vendor, Silver Sails Corp. The City of Atlanta is "currently examining all available legal options" to recover the $100,000 spent on the counterfeit alarms, according to the fire department."

http://www.made-in-china.com/traderoom/silversails
"We are an industrial supplier to local, state and federal agencies..."

http://www.atlantaga.gov/media/nr_afrdrecall_051211.aspx
"Purchase History:
Bids were submitted to AFRD, according to City of Atlanta Department of Procurement policies and procedures, with specifications for the detector purchase to include: new ionization type; Federal and State of Georgia Occupational Safety and Health Act compliancy; UL compliancy; continuous alarm duration; alarm sound level of 85 dB@ 10 feet; low battery indicator; hush button; test button; twist off mounting bracket; and long life 10 year lithium battery
Three bids were submitted from the following vendors: Englewood Electrical Supply (June 7, 2005), Silver Sails Inc. (June 7, 2005), and Cintas (July 8, 2005)
July 29, 2005- Silver Sails Inc. was awarded the procurement bid (8337-BA)"

You can't even play the "sold on a rogue site" card on this one. A government program got duped into buying them and distributed to people.

It is imperative that Congress address this growing danger with safeguards that support commerce and innovation, while protecting American consumers, our communities, and the first responders who keep us safe. These bills do just that.

Congressman Lamar Smith (TX-21) and Senator Patrick Leahy (VT) should be applauded for introducing these important bills. Congress should act quickly to pass comprehensive legislation protecting consumers from dangerous, counterfeit goods.

But as Techdirt has noted before, it's likely that people know exactly what they are getting when they buy counterfeits, and that they are not confused in the slightest. Moreover, there's no evidence that the sales of genuine designer clothes in the UK have suffered over the last six years as a result of all these fakes being allowed on to the streets: were there any, the scheme would certainly have been halted by now. So is there any good reason why other homeless and vulnerable people around the world shouldn't benefit too?

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That false equivalence between counterfeits and digital copies is also employed to give the impression that since cheap knock-offs are pretty obvious, it's easy to tell the difference between a legal digital file, and one that is unauthorised. However, unauthorised digital files are generally exact copies of authorised ones, making it impossible to tell them apart. What counts is whether the distribution is authorized, and there are all kinds of legal considerations like fair use or Creative Commons licensing that can make it very hard to tell without detailed legal scrutiny in a court.

Even the assumption that physical copies are relatively easy to spot is dubious, as this fascinating essay from Andrew 'bunnie' Huang about counterfeit chips in military hardware explains. Here's the background:

Amendment 1092 to the Defense Authorization Act of 2012 is a well-intentioned but misguided provision outlining measures designed to reduce the prevalance of counterfeit chips in the US military supply chain.

< ...>

Under the proposed anti-counterfeit amendment, first-time offenders can receive a $5 million fine and 20 years prison for individuals, or $15 million for corporations; a penalty comparable to that of trafficking cocaine.

Alongside "trivial external mimicry" – authentic-looking but empty packages – he mentions the following: refurbished parts (authentic parts recovered from e-waste); rebinned parts (authentic but with markings changed to a higher specification); ghost-shift parts (produced in the official factory by employees, but unofficially); factory scrap (rejects and pilot runs recovered from the scrap heap); and second-sourcing gone bad (pin-compatible replacements produced by competitors remarked as superior brands.)

As Huang points out:

It’s one thing to inspect fruits and vegetables as they enter the country for pests and other problems; but it is misguided to require Customs officers to become experts in detecting fakes, and/or to burden vendors with the onus of determining whether parts are authentic, particularly with such high penalties involved and the relative ease that forgers can create high-quality counterfeit parts.

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There are a lot of Angry Birds products out there, but most of them aren't officially licensed. Angry Birds is now the most copied brand in China, and we get a lot of inspiration from local producers.

Right now, we've proven that there's demand, and we're going for 100 million downloads this year for Angry Birds, and again the same demand for the physical products.

The way we look at it is, of course we want to sell the officially licensed, good quality products, but at the same time we have to be happy about the fact that the brand is so loved that it is the most copied brand in China.

It's great for us to see the demand, and that's why we're building our own stores here. And actually we're building our first stores here, and not in Helsinki... We hope to have quite a few over the next 12 months.

We need to create an environment that rewards that innovation.

For example, imagine spending hundreds of millions of dollars on research for a new lifesaving drug, only to have a counterfeiter make an unregulated, substandard version, with little or no medical value. Imagine that counterfeiter selling this product — with your name on it — online with impunity.

Imagine, for another example, opening up your own small business, a photography studio. You work by yourself, maybe with one assistant, and take wonderful, high-quality photographs that you sell to advertising agencies or the hometown newspaper. Imagine that you are able to expand — and hire two or three of your neighbors to meet the growing demand.

Then imagine your customers downloading your photos from a website that stole your best images, posted them online and profited from either sales of your photos or advertising revenue from the attraction of your photos.

These rogue websites dedicated to counterfeiting and piracy put U.S. jobs, consumers and innovation at risk. Last year, these rogue sites stole an estimated $135 billion in sales from legitimate retailers around the globe. They clearly violate the intellectual property rights of U.S. citizens by ignoring our trademark and copyright laws.

The Senate is waiting to vote on the legislation, and the House is due to introduce its version of rogue site legislation in the coming days. We look forward to the enactment of rogue-site legislation this year to protect American jobs and consumers by cutting off the worst online intellectual property thieves from the U.S. marketplace.

"Look, piracy is outright theft," Biden said. "People are out there blatantly stealing from Americans -- stealing their ideas and robbing us of America's creative energies. There's no reason why we should treat intellectual property any different than tangible property."

He is quick to say that he considers it more than a problem of just the entertainment industry. "When our military is sold counterfeit equipment that is faulty, it affects our national security. And when cancer patients are sold fake cancer drugs that contain no medicine, it affects public health. These are serious issues for the American people."

"Virtually every American company that manufactures something is getting killed by counterfeiters: clothing, software, jewelry, tires," Biden said. "If an American company has been successful at developing an idea, it's likely getting stolen."

"I think the entertainment industry would agree that they have done a poor job in making their case and need to do better," Biden said. "I mean, they have some of the brightest and most creative people working for them."

"They should be able to come up with an intelligent, original and effective public education campaign targeting this issue. To be honest, I am not certain they have dedicated the appropriate resources to this, and I hope they will."

"Kids are taught that it is not right to steal a lollipop from the corner store," he said. "They also need to understand that it is equally wrong to knowingly steal a movie or a song from the Internet."

Biden doesn't buy the idea that Hollywood's effort to increase enforcement is merely to protect dying businesses.

"The fact is, media companies have already taken significant steps to adapt their business models to keep up with changes in how we watch movies and listen to music," Biden said. "Content is being offered to consumers in a variety of different ways that make it easy and cost-effective for people to access legal material. Anyone who does not understand this should simply talk with one of my grandkids."

Biden said he sees a shift in China, where piracy is rampant and where Hollywood has long struggled to gain cooperation from the government to address the problem. He said South Korea's strengthened intellectual property laws have led to the "Korean Wave" in entertainment across Asia, and "China's leaders understand this."

The European Union and the United States continue to focus almost exclusively on eliminating counterfeit medicines which form only a small part of this public health problem -- but which are a serious concern for their multinational companies. They have used the crisis in medicine quality in developing countries as an excuse to push for new intellectual property rules that will boost the profits of pharmaceutical giants at the expense of affordable medicines for the poor.

At a time when poor countries struggle to ensure that their populations can get affordable, quality medicines it is outrageous that rich countries and drug companies are pushing 'solutions' that will do more harm than good to patients and public health. It is critical that poor countries ignore rich-country pressure, and focus instead on solutions that will ensure both quality and affordability of medicines.

"Pirated handbags? Yes, I do buy them," she said. "I feel that the genuine Prada bags have such an inflated price."

"You have a pirated MP3 collection," Jo added, helpfully. "We copied the first 1500 songs from one place and 300 from another."

"Yes," admitted Ragde. "There were a lot of things on the iPod."